Monday, April 30, 2007

Henna Seated

Henna Seated, 2007, pencil on paper, 24 x 18 inches

Very unexpectedly I was able to get a good drawing done this past Saturday in class. Why you may wonder? Before registering in Michael Burban's class this month I had taken another drawing class with a different instructor, Sherry Camhy. The name of the class, Painterly Drawing, was set up so that students could draw and paint from the same pose for the whole month. That's fine when you want to get a good drawing or painting done, but to my unfortunate luck we were given Henna as a model. The pose and the mood of this woman was all wrong. It was painful to watch this sad middle aged woman sit on a chair holding a book and falling asleep as she posed. With that bad experience I enrolled into my current class in hopes that I would get a chance to draw from more dynamic models, which I have. But this Saturday morning Henna comes into the drawing studio, about 20 to 30 minutes late, and I wanted to run away with my sketch pad and pencils. But to my surprise she pulled it together this time and gave us a good pose, allowing me to get a good drawing in two and a half hours.

Luis, don't be so hard on yourself, the works you have created have been done very well. You should be proud. Indeed, the best thing about your work is you keep getting better, show such rapid improvement and in my opinion, you have a brilliant career ahead of you.

Thank you Robert, I am very proud of the work I do. I'm not putting myself down I just being realistic since I know there are plenty more artists out there who are better. But I do like the fact that you see growth in my work. I haven't been able to notice it until last night when I finished "Red Bartlett Pear." There's something in that painting that's not in the other one and I can't put my fingers on it. But no matter what it is it's a big step forward. Thanks for checking my work.

Am glad you liked what I said. I realize there will always be lots of artists who are better than me, but they don't have what I have: my experience, my perspective, my feelings. Some idiot wrote me that it was "too bad" that I didn't paint larger, which is nonsense, I responded, my work is what it IS. No one tries harder or cares about what we do more than us. I love checking your work, man.

Well that guy doesn't know what he's talking about since a painting doesn't have to be large to be GOOD! Large scale works for some, but when done right a small painting can have as much if not more presence than a larger one. Stick to what feels right for you, when you stay true to yourself the work of art will be successful. Thank you once again for checking out my work.

About Me

"Anything under the sun is beautiful if you have the vision-it is the seeing of the thing that makes it so."
- Charles W. Hawthorne -
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"One of the functions of art is to remind us of common humanity. The artist, like the priest, can sometimes remind us that we are bound by an obligation to one another stronger and more lasting than the bonds of politics or economics."
- John Manchip White, Diego Velazquez: Painter and Courtier -
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"To defend an artist as original says little about his work except that it is in some way different from what preceded it. As such, originality itself is rarely a strong defense, for it is born more of admiration for audacity and perseverance than necessarily of understanding." - James H. Rubin, Manet's Silence and the Poetics of Bouquets -